The question of multiple identities in Samuel Beckett's works

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: 16 / 20 University of Rennes 2 language: English abstract: Ce mémoire traite des identités plurielles et de l'entre-deux culturel dans les oeuvres de Samuel Beckett. The void has been a great source of inspiration for Samuel Barclay Beckett and hiscritics who tend to take into account the characteristics of his mind rather than hiswritings. Such a deconstructionist discourse on negative identity is redundant but alsocontradictory. This study aims at exploring the fundamental question of multipleidentities in Samuel Beckett's fictions and dramas particularly The Unnamable fromthe trilogy Waiting for Godot Endgame Krapp's Last Tape and other relevant works.As a novelist playwright and translator Beckett can be said to be part of a revolutionaryliterature. His rejection and exploitation of the literary tradition make him an ambivalentwriter. The problem of singularity regarding his works is crucial in the stabilization ofidentity. Moreover the lack of a major theme becomes an obstacle to the definition ofsuch works. The representation of these multiple identities will be analyzed in order toelucidate the following inquiry: To what extent does Beckett's texts shed light on theseminal notions of rootlessness and cultural in-betweenness as well as on the rejectionof identification through self-exploration and radical experimentation? A certain numberof critical readings will be used to discuss Beckett's place in literature through hischaracters' apparent lack of attachment to any tradition. Does literature have a functionin the formation of identity? What sort of renovation does the Beckettian texts offer? Itwill be first noted that his borrowings from the French and Irish traditions coupled withhis aloofness to them are indicators of the complexity of his mode of communicationwhich is itself predicated on individual and conventional